


if you're happy in a dream, does that count?

by aiineslin



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Brotherhood, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiineslin/pseuds/aiineslin
Summary: they fit together perfectly, seamlessly.
Kudos: 20





	if you're happy in a dream, does that count?

**Author's Note:**

> more a writing exercise than anything
> 
> completed because i had the chepe bit lying around for ages, and wanted to get it out there; finished based off half-memories and some quick google searches 
> 
> title taken from the god of small things, by arundhati roy

Gilberto, wheeling and dealing, an elegant fox in a neatly-made suit, smile like the most honest of politicians. It was he who looked at Miguel when they were teenagers, raw and scrawny and with hunger in their bellies, their knuckles bruised from the beating they had given to the poor fuck who didn’t pay his protection money and said, “Mano, we can be so much more.”

Trust and believe, when you have a will and _imagination,_ there is nothing in the world that can stop you. He is good with his letters, Gilberto is able to massage and beat words into shapes that suit his purpose – and when the time for speaking is over, it is Miguel who takes up the slack, stepping into the empty space beside him, gun ready in his hand. His brother, his strong right hand, the strength that Gilberto relied on to carve Cali into the grand empire he had always envisioned.

“We’ve arrived, Miguelito,” Gilberto had said when they made their first thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million. “We’ve arrived.”

-

Miguel, a war-horse, broad-shouldered and staid. He is in perpetual lockstep with Gilberto; where Gilberto darts ahead whip-fast, Miguel trudges slowly, steadily behind. It has been this way forever, since their teenage years, when Miguel answered Gilberto that one fateful day, “I’ll go where you lead, mano.”

Once, a few years after they have begun the slow and bloody climb to become jefes and a long time from now, when they were still young and the black in their hair did not come from a bottle, Miguel had said to Gilberto, “What would I be without you, mano?” And Gilberto had laughed, and thrown the very same words back at him.

He thinks of this moment (small and hazy, trapped and viewed through the amber lens of memory) when Gilberto is captured, and when Chepe calls from Nueva York, Miguel says, “Come home, mano. War is here.”

-

Chepe, bright and hard and shining like silver, always looking outwards. It is easy enough to choose who to send to Nueva York when the need for representation arises - he is here, he has always been waiting, and he all but burns with excitement when they hand him a new passport and identity papers. He calls home once a week, sends postcards once a month and one memorable year, delivers a bevy of strippers to Miguel’s doorstep when his birthday rolled around.

“What the fuck,” Miguel had said, staring at the women arrayed on his doorstep, and one of them stepped forward and passed him an envelope. When opened, a photo fell out – Chepe with a thumbs-up and a shit-eating grin standing in fucking Times Square, hotdog in hand – a dollop of mustard just about falling off it – and lights burning in smears of vivid colour all around him.

Behind the photo, Chepe writes in a broad, unsteady scrawl, _“Happy birthday Miguel! Hope you like the gift. P.S. Pachito, I didn’t forget about you.”_

(There is a man among the strippers, and under his tearaway pants, he wears nothing but a thong and a glittery little bowtie.)

-

Pacho, silk over steel, graceful and easy in his demeanour. He is best-loved among the Cali godfathers, with his beautiful shirts and beautiful manners and beautiful smile. Few remember the mechanic who had worked his way up from the very bottom of Cali, his fingers smudged in oil and dirt stains on his trousers (no, Pacho would never go back to those days).

In Pacho, Gilberto sees his farsightedness; Miguel his steadfast loyalty and Chepe his quicksilver adaptiveness. Pachito is the best of all of them, and they loved him as they did a brother, a son. He returns their faith twice-over, in blood and money; Pacho will swallow a sun, for the men who had taken him in and made him family in all but blood. When Cali tumbles around his ears, when Gilberto is put in jail, when Miguel’s machinations are cut short, when Chepe disappears into the ground – Pacho stays, Pacho stays in Colombia. 

(Where would he go without his family?) 

It is a hot, cloudless day when bullets find their home in the tender spaces of his body, and when he falls to the ground, it feels soft. When he goes, when he closes his eyes against the pain and the heat, he sees nothing but blue, blue and blue.


End file.
